As we head towards the start of Estonia’s selection process, Eesti Laul, we thought it was time we caught up with the acts appearing!
In the first semi final, on February 13th, we will see Anett Kulbin and Frederik Küüts, performing as Anett x Fredi with their entry “Write About Me” . We caught up with Fredi to talk about their collaboration, their expectations and those killer vocals!
Fredi, welcome to Eesti Laul! You’ve teamed up with Anett (ex-Wilhelm EL 2014, 2015 and solo artist 2016) How did this collaboration come about?
First of all, thank you!
I’ve been a fan of Anett for years, so I’d been thinking about a collaboration for a while. I guess the first talk of a songwriting session was when I went to see her EP-release concert. I went up to her and said that I loved the gig and asked if she would consider writing together in the future – happily, she agreed!
We have been told that this is your first time on the Eesti Laul stage, but that’s not strictly true is it? (Fredi appeared as part of the band “Beyond Beyond” in the interval of Eesti Laul 2017) How was that experience?
That was just an honor for me and the guys. There’s not many shows with that kind of production here in Estonia, so to be a part of the finals of Eesti Laul was just an awesome experience. I guess that was our biggest crowd ever and we had a lot of fun up on that stage!
Let’s talk about your song “Write About Me” which you co-wrote with Anett and also produced – how did this this song come to be written? Was it specifically for the Eesti Laul contest?
I was having bit of a tough time writing-wise this past summer and I just remembered how many of the co-writing sessions had been uplifting in that sense. So I arranged some sessions with artists that I had wanted to work with for a long time. Anett agreed to come by my place and we listened to some demos. I had this guitar part down and she really liked it so we worked our way up from there. By the time the song had been written it was just under 3 minutes and when Anett suggested we applied for Eesti Laul it all just kind of made sense. I didn’t actually think it would go through but I guess it was worth the shot.
The lyric “if you could write songs, would you write one about me” is such a powerful line, tell us about the story behind the song
To be honest, I had written that lyric down about 4 years ago. I always knew that I wanted to write a song around it, but I guess it just wasn’t the right time until now. I started writing songs from a pretty early age and at some point it was a really natural thing for me, to write songs about things and people who made me feel some kind of way. That was just my way of getting things off my chest. I was just wondering if everybody could write songs – what would they write about. And adding that romantic touch to it, as I tend to do, lead me to the main lyric. That was pretty much the only thing we had in the beginning, Anett really loved the idea and we started writing from there. Everything else just came into place – when Anett suggested that we’d change the choruses a bit every time, to make it into sort of timeline, that was when everything got really easy. The song is kind of self-explanatory: one side of the relationship is willing to give more than the other and overtime they start to grow apart. We’re both super happy about how it turned out!
At just 20 years of age, you have an impressive history as a singer/songwriter, were you always planning on a career in the music industry? What else would you have done if not music?
I don’t know if “impressive” would be the right word for it but I’ll take it as a compliment!
I knew that I wanted my life to be about music from an early age. Although I don’t really consider myself as a singer anymore. Right now I’m mostly a guitarist-producer-songwriter-dude and I’ve made some awesome connections over the past few years, so I consider myself lucky in that sense. I get to work with some of the best singers and producers in Estonia and most of them are really good friends of mine, so I have only realised over this past year, that it has really become like career-thing. I’m a freelancer musician and the fact that I get to make my living as a guitarist and produce some awesome music with great people – there’s really a lot of things to be thankful for.
And to answer your second question – I couldn’t really imagine my life without music, as naive as that sounds.
Obviously, the winner of Eesti Laul will go on to represent Estonia at the Eurovision Song Contest, how important would this be to you? Is Eurovision something you usually follow?
To be honest, it’s not that important to me. I just want people to hear the song that we made. I know that not everybody is going to like it. But Eesti Laul really provides the artists with a platform to share their music. And for me one of the biggest points of making music is to share with people. The fact that we get to perform the song with Anett on live-television with a lot of people watching is already a winning situation for me. Don’t get me wrong – it would be awesome if we really did get the chance to go to Eurovision!
I don’t consider watching Eurovision a must, but I always listen to the winners and I get suggested to listen to the best bits from here and there anyways. I got to play guitar on Victor Crone’s song which represented Estonia last year, so I was really rooting for him! But overall I’m kind of a mild Eurovision fan.
Are you and Anett planning on working together again after Eesti Laul?
I certainly hope so. She is just an awesome person to be around – and those killer-vocals tho!
Watch Anett x Fredi’s song “Write About Me” here or listen via this Spotify link
What do you think about “Write About Me?” Vote in our poll for your qualifiers for the first semi final here, and keep following us on ESCBubble for all the news and the best interviews from Eesti Laul 2020!
